I always find his videos extremely relaxing for some reason. Since I love the outdoors and the woods I'm definitely going to try some of the techniques on his channel, but only as soon as it gets a lot warmer around here, I don't need to experience hardcore Stone-Age wintertime survival to be honest.
The minimal editing, the close-ups to the camera when technical decisions happen and his absolute selfless-ness give it a very pure tone. You can tell he knows what he is doing, and has done research, but this is just you witnessing a hobby that needs not to be sold or advertised — just enjoyed.
If you liked those, try to get your hands on Dersu Uzala: it’s a Soviet-Japanese movie from 1975 (I know…) that has hours of forest scenes with the same peacefulness and purpose.
Thank you for the suggestion, I will see if I can get the movie somewhere (Even if I don't enjoy it at the very least it will improve my hipster level ;) )
However, I don't think he'll find copper and tin ores in the same place, and trading stuff kinda ruins the entire premise of the project. So he'll have to get right to steelmaking, skipping bronze.
First, he'll have to obtain iron ore (since he's in Australia, it will be easy enough). Then, he needs coke — he can make it from charcoal by using beehive oven: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beehive_oven
Most of his stuff is great, but his nitroglycerine video made me cringe. He's dealing with fuming acids inside, WITHOUT a fume hood, and (IMO) doesn't have respect for the danger or the repercussions of that substance. Other than that, I like his videos.
To further convince anyone reading this: He has videos on making huts, axes, drills, baskets, and more, all completely from scratch and all with (to my taste, at least) extremely good, no wasted time editing.
Very fun topic to think about. My $.02: Together with the genetic diversity you need food, lots of food. I bet if you look up the average hunter-gatherer village size, that's about the maximum size of a population you can support on just hunter-gathering and perhaps some basic farming.
To get a civilization that could support even a modest town large enough to support small mining operations and general trade you need the most important technology we've spent the past 10.000-40.000 years developing and which I don't see any technological shortcut to: The potato, banana, the chicken, the cow, etc. Superfoods, without which a civilization won't get very far and which will definitely not just exist on a planet that's never seen human cultivation.
(There's a fun survivorman episode where he gets dropped in a jungle, and after a day or two of hardship he stumbles upon an abandoned farm, instantly the whole 'surviving' aspect is gone and the rest of the episode is about him trying to live comfortably (i.e. not being eaten by ants at night), the difference between a bleeding edge modern mango and sucking on a wild berry is stark (the episode is called "Grenada Jungle"))
If you're interested in higher efficiency DIY charcoal production methods check out the tlud design made from repurposed 55 gallon drums. The output is pure enough to be used as fuel or soil amendment: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=13OcuoJWYpo
In the last couple of years I have gotten hard core into Kamado BBQing/smoking and one of the challenges is getting really good charcoal (there is also huge argument to the degree of how much this really matters ala audiophiles on wires but most say it does matter).
See all of this hero's videos, they're awesome. I really hope he continues sharing his effort to re-explore the barehands approach at making a living. :)
